No. 2325

Woodcock Pudding

Pouding de Becasses

Cut up two clean raw woodcocks, dividing each one into five or six pieces, then season. Prepare a paste with a pound of flour, three-quarters of a pound of finely chopped beef suet, a little water and salt; give it two turns like a puff paste, roll it out and use it to line a half spherical-shaped mold; bestrew the bottom with raw onions, shallot, fresh mushrooms and parsley all finely chopped, and on this range the pieces of woodcock, dredging them over with chopped parsley. Cook the intestines taken from the birds with grated fat pork, press through a sieve and dissolve with a little half-glaze (No. 400), then pour it over the woodcocks. Close the opening with a layer of the same paste, fastening it well to the edges, and place the large part of the mold on the middle of a wet towel and tie the ends firmly on the top or round part of the mold. Cook the pudding for two hours in boiling water, then drain off the mold, untie the towel and turn the pudding over on a dish, remove the mold and cover the bottom of the dish with a little sauce reduced with game fumet (No. 397) and truffle peelings; glaze the paste with a brush and serve with a separate sauce reduced with game fumet.

← No. 2324 Thrush Pudding Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2326 Chicken Quenelles a la Drew →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's pudding is a boiled suet crust lining a bowl-shaped mold, filled with jointed game and a sauce built from the birds' own trail. The technique is straightforward; the obstacles are sourcing and the cross-references to his sauce chapter.

Sourcing the birdsWoodcock is a legal game bird in season in both North America and Europe, but under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act it cannot be sold commercially in the United States, so it reaches the kitchen only through a hunter. Four to six quail, or two squab, give a comparable pudding of about the same volume, though neither has the woodcock's liver-like depth.
The trailWoodcock are traditionally drawn only of the gizzard, the rest of the intestine being prized. Ranhofer cooks it with grated pork fat and sieves it, so this is a cooked forcemeat, not a raw one. If working with quail or squab, use the livers and hearts instead.
Half-glaze and game fumetNo. 400 is Ranhofer's demi-glace, a brown sauce reduced with stock until it coats; No. 397 is a game fumet, essentially a concentrated stock from game trimmings and bones. A good reduced brown veal stock stands in for both, sharpened with the roasted carcass bones of whatever bird you use.
Suet crust proportionsOne pound flour to twelve ounces suet is about 4:3 by weight, richer than the 2:1 flour-to-suet of an English steak pudding. Add water only until it just coheres; the two "turns like a puff paste" are rolls and folds, and the dough should stay short rather than elastic.
The mold and the clothA half-spherical mold means a metal or ceramic pudding basin. Grease it well, line it with the paste, and tie the wet cloth the recipe calls for over the top with string under the rim so no water reaches the crust. Leave a little slack for the pastry to swell.
BoilingTwo hours in boiling water as the recipe directs, kept at a steady rather than a violent boil, with the water reaching two-thirds up the basin and topped up from a kettle as it drops.
The doneness questionTwo hours brings the interior well past 165F, so the game will be fully cooked and falling from the bone rather than pink. This is a braise in pastry, not a roast; anyone expecting rare woodcock breast should roast the birds instead.
YieldThe recipe gives no mold size or serving count; two woodcock make a modest dish, four small portions at most. Turn it out and cut it at the table, since the crust firms as it cools and the sauce runs.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's summation of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its game chapters read as a record of what American markets once sold openly: this pudding follows directly on his recipe for thrush pudding. Boiled suet puddings filled with game are an English inheritance, and Ranhofer's version is a French rendering of that idea, with the bowl-shaped mold, the cloth tied over the top, and the long simmer all belonging to the British pudding-basin tradition rather than to the pastry tourte. The use of the woodcock's intestine is the giveaway of a genuine game cook: the bird has no true crop and its trail was long considered the best of it, worked into a paste and returned to the dish as sauce. What has changed since is the law rather than the taste. Market hunting for songbirds and shorebirds was ended in the United States by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which is why a dish a restaurant chef could once list as a standard entrée now depends entirely on a friend with a shotgun.